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The National Museum of Brazil (Museu Nacional) in Rio de Janeiro burned down with all the historical artifacts! I never got to visit this museum and I've been wanting to visit for a long time.

This museum was founded 200 years ago by one of Portugal's king when he made Rio de Janeiro de capital of Portugal. In fact, the Portuguese royal family lived in the palace that housed the museum. The building was also home to Brazil's imperial family.

Some of the 20 million priceless historical artifacts of human history that are now lost forever are:

- The original throne of the king of Dahomey (old kingdom in West Africa)

- Ancient Egyptian mummies

- The oldest human skeleton ever found in Brazil

- Pre-Columbian Native American artifacts from tribes all over the Western Hemisphere

- The Kore statuette from Ancient Greece

- 4 frescos from Pompeii

The only artifact that is guaranteed to survive the fire is a meteorite that once landed in Brazil and was the main centerpiece at the entrance to the museum.

Horrible!!

Here's an amazing tour of the museum before it burned down.

I can't believe Google Street View didn't do an indoor photographic tour as they have done in other great museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC or the Prado Museum in Madrid or the Louvre in Paris or the National Anthropological Museum in Mexico City. This is unbelievable, one of the greatest museums anywhere and Google treated it as if it was a place of little importance. Had they done the indoor photographic tour, at least the world would had that as a rememberance. SMH

Initially I said that among the lost artifacts was the oldest human skeleton found in Brazil, it turns out it was the oldest human skull ever found in the Western Hemisphere!

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The most famous of those artifacts was Luzia, the 11,000-year-old skull of a Paleoindian woman whose remains are the earliest discovered in the Americas.

The worst part of this tragedy is the reason why it completely burned down.

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Katia Bogea, president of the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage, was quoted in the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper blaming the devastating loss on budget cuts resulting from a "crisis of values," as translated by AFP.

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...the immediate problem leading to the out-of-control blaze was that the smoke detectors weren't working and the building's fire suppression systems were limited.

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A crowd of protestors gathered in the wake of the blaze and blamed politicians for neglecting the museum, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. They indicated that funding had been redirected to other priorities, such as the 2016 Rio Olympics.

I can't believe Google Street View didn't do an indoor photographic tour as they have done in other great museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC or the Prado Museum in Madrid or the Louvre in Paris or the National Anthropological Museum in Mexico City. This is unbelievable, one of the greatest museums anywhere and Google treated it as if it was a place of little importance. Had they done the indoor photographic tour, at least the world would had that as a rememberance. SMH

Ummm... what was stopping the Brazilian government or anyone else in Brazil from making their own indoor photographic tour of the museum? Why were you waiting for Google to do it??

So don't blame Google for your lack of videos of your museum. Especially when everyone and their mother has a smartphone and can make videos at no cost.

Perhaps there is enough video footage of the museum to stitch together an indoor photographic tour of the museum. One just needs to get the word out to everyone who has every visited the museum and taking videos of it, and then spend the time to combine and edit the footage.

Tragic loss for sure but not surprising they were dead broke and diverted a bunch of money to foot the bill for the Olympics. Preventing this museum from burning to ashes was simply not a priority I suspect there are tons of other historical monuments currently rotting in Brazil.

Is this not punishable by some historical or scientific agency? Losing things like this shouldn't just be chalked up to "budget cuts."

The people who run the museum have been vocal for quite some time that the museum has been left to rot. Truth be told the structure was the residence of the former Brazilian/Portuguese monarchy and there still exists a current of disdain from unhealed wounds of what transpired 200 years ago. There are books that have been written on this subject and some of my Brazilian friends admit that this is subliminal for the most part but still real and doesn't get talked about much.

The people who run the museum have been vocal for quite some time that the museum has been left to rot. Truth be told the structure was the residence of the former Brazilian/Portuguese monarchy and there still exists a current of disdain from unhealed wounds of what transpired 200 years ago. There are books that have been written on this subject and some of my Brazilian friends admit that this is subliminal for the most part but still real and doesn't get talked about much.

Just conspiracy theories… For Brazilians the monarchy in Rio de Janeiro 200 years ago was a Brazilian monarchy and most view it as positive…
Only think Rio de Janeiro state is under ‘’ the Union’s intervention’’ they are being ruled for the federal Brazilian goverment because the last politicians over there made the state a mess… Is easy understand why the museum didn’t have enough maintenance.
Brazil is descentralized country in administration, the NATIONAL MUSEUM was under Universidade do Rio de Janeiro and local fire workers administration.

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